


reassurance at the end of your fingertips

by viscountfrancisbacon



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, but shhhhh it's basically comfort pwp, indulgent cuddle fic is one of my joys on this earth, kinda OOC Luffy, no hurt no plot just comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 16:37:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1134977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscountfrancisbacon/pseuds/viscountfrancisbacon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>luffy is acting weird, and nami tries to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	reassurance at the end of your fingertips

**Author's Note:**

> this one made the slimetwin very happy it's entirely indulgent please forgive

It's almost time for a break out on her lawn chair on the deck, but before that Nami wants to get just this last section of her latest map done. Her cartographical supplies have devoured the dining table in their spread, and the orange-haired weather witch has been dutifully hunched over the organzied mess for the better part of an hour or three.

Not even Sanji, with his million compliments and afternoon snack and respectfully quiet work in the kitchen, could dislodge her from her work. He's gone now, however, probably to go smoke over the railing or stare at the aquarium with its multitude of undersea life. Nami has been enjoying the rare experience of solitary peace as she prepares to finish for the day.

The door, which Sanji had shut behind him, makes a soft sound as it opens (it does not, however, creak. Franky's doors would never do something as shabby as creaking). Well, if it didn't slam then it's probably someone who won't shatter her precious moment of quiet like—

—Luffy. Luffy, who is standing in the open doorway with one hand curled around the knob and the sound of the sea the only noise between them. His hat is covering half his face but her captain might as well be a storm for all his navigator can read him, and the forecast is not very pleasant.

"Luffy," Nami says, capping her ink and tucking away her quill and leaving her map where it lies, “is something wrong?” It's a question intended to provoke a response, not to gain any new information. Because her brain, tapping into some of the same parts that produce always-accruate forecasts, whipers about how unnaturally quiet Luffy is, how he lingers on the threshold, how the hat tilted just so over his face and his light grasp on the doorknob signals all the wrong things to her just like the slightest change in atmospheric pressure and temperature heralding a hard, wild storm.

Instead of speaking, Luffy walks towards her and closes the door (again, not slamming it, but like a normal person would) as he goes, which doesn't help that part of Nami's brain. When he crosses the short distance to where the former thief was seated Luffy stops and continues to point his face towards the ground. Standing now, Nami stretches like the cat she's called. Considers that her captain's eyes are flickering to her just as often as they look at the floorboards, even if she can't actually see them dart back and forth. Considers the other times she's seen Luffy in a strange, silent, melancholy mood like this, and the way it does something unpleasant in her chest to see her usually painfully cheerful nakama as he is now.

At least past experience can give her some confidence in what he probably wants now. Nami faces him and lifts her arms as Luffy reaches tenatively for her and lets the quiet rubberman clutch at her hands. He gives a long drawn-out sigh that hitches as if he was going to say something, but in the end he merely holds on and stares at where their hands meet. Then, Luffy leans into the space between them and rests her ink-stained hands on either side of his face, his own fingers drifting past the scar tissue on the back of one palm to grasp Nami's wrists as gently as he held the doorknob.

Nami moves a thumb over the distinctive scar underlining his eye and almost sighs herself. There's something strangely suiting and yet almost unsettlingly raw about the whole situation. A part of Nami's mind notes how sensitive the face is, how Luffy doesn't even twitch as her fingers brush over his eyelids, how his quiet demeanour is shifting just a few degrees away from where it was when he walked in. Nami thinks about making someone feel even a little bit better with just her fingers on their face. Nami thinks about making Luffy, who smiles look like he's burned what things like sadness even mean out of his mind, feel even a little bit better with just her prescence and her hands in his.

It's raw and unsettling and strangely suiting and even though Luffy looks a tiny bit less lost now something in Nami's chest hurts all the more. She finds herself hoping whatever ache she has is an ache gone from her captain. Nami also finds her hands migrating to the sides of the perpetually messy hair under the straw hat, flicking the battered treasure off his head and onto his back with a few well-placed movements.

As his fingers slide to lightly grip her upper arms Nami rests her forehead against Luffy's darker one and sighs herself, trying to expel something other than air with her breath. Luffy's hands stay on her arms and hers on his head and their foreheads stay pressed together as if Nami can leech this mood from him by touch alone. Not that she doesn't already seem to be doing so, and once again Nami feels a twist of emotion because whatever Luffy is feeling right now...suffering isn't the right word, but whatever it is she does not want it on her captain's face and in his movement and coloring his unnatural silence.

She does not want it and the fact that a few hestitant touches of hands and fingers from both of them can help dispell whatever troubles Luffy makes Nami have to beat down certain ingrained reflexes. Reflexes that shudder at the vulernability laden in their positions and prickle at the inherent trust that lets Nami feel utterly at ease when Luffy's arms drop to curl around her waist, hands clutching slightly at the hem of her shirt. Nami continues the transition to hug by wrapping her own arms around his muscled shoulders (and belately remembers that he's only barely taller than she is, so she doesn't even have to lift her arms that high) and letting Luffy's head slide down and rest in the crook between her neck and shoulder.

They stay like that for a little while, Luffy wrapped around his navigator and giving little huffing sighs every so often, leaning gently against Nami and fiddling with the fabric of her shirt. For her part, Nami merely enjoys the heat radiating off the rubber body (good to know all that caloric energy from the ridiculous amount of food Luffy eats isn't going to waste, she muses) and ponders that she's probably never had as many hugs in the rest of her life as she's gotten since she joined this impossibile man's crew. Then again, it wasn't like her previous occupations left her in a prime spot for healthy physical contact.

But it seems like Nami's done a better job of cheering her captain up than she thought, and if there's anything that never lasts around Luffy it's peace. Well, peace and food.

“Nami,” Luffy says into her neck, shattering his quiet streak. Nami pulls back from the hug slightly and blinks at him, wondering what he could possibly want. “your breath is kinda stinky, you know. Did Sanji make you something to eat? He should make me something, I'm hungry.”

Moments later, Sanji opens the kitchen door with perfect timing to prevent it being potentially damaged, and instead unexpectedly takes the full brunt of a rubberman traveling at high velocity in the opposite direction. Even later, Franky will kindly thank him for playing human shield for his precious doors. After all, damaging the hinges might make them creak, you know.


End file.
